Reader-Recommended Churches

I often receive requests from readers for the name of a recommended Church of Christ in their area. This is a compilation of the recommendations made by readers over the years. I am not personally familiar with all these churches.

Obviously, there are many excellent churches not on this list, either because readers haven’t asked for recommendations in that area or the readers just weren’t familiar with a particular congregation.

As a rule, I only add a church recommended via the comments, as this gives the other readers the chance to comment on the wisdom of the recommendation.

And "Almeda" should be "Alameda." Alameda has an excellent counseling program by the way. They have two (last time i checked) licensed counselors on staff who counsel full time to anyone in church or community on a sliding scale charge (UBER cheap, if necessary).

I am a member of Alameda. There is only one counselor, Randy Hendricks. If you have insurance, he will take it. It you meet at the church instead of his office and can not pay, there is no charge. He will work with anybody.

I would like to add to this list under 'Texas' congregations Southside church of Christ in Killeen, Texas. I received a tremendous amount of spiritual development in my years there. Keith Cormier and the members are a loving and diverse body and I miss them dearly. However, I enjoy having returned home to Raleigh, NC and the church of my youth, South Central church of Christ (formerly known as Rochester Heights church of Christ). Thanks for this listing Brother Jay and your voice.

I'm biased Jay. I have been reading your blog for a while and been blessed by the deep thought. There is push here to be Biblical and Jesus Centered. Salvation by grace through faith is a constant theme I read. I thank God for this.
I'm biased about this church have preached here 28 years, but I would like to have Southeast Church of Christ in Aurora, CO added to your list.
Thanks
Larry Wishard

Bob,Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve added them to the list.I just realized that it’s been a year or so since anyone asked me to recommend a church. I used to get requests all the time. The list must be serving to help people find new church homes.That’s only possible because of good recommendations. Thanks.

The Southlake Blvd church in Southlake, Texas is now a campus of The HIlls (formerly North Richland Hills) and is now called The Hills at Southlake. In fact I saw that Rick Atchley preached twice there this past Sunday.

I whole-heartedly recommend the Missouri Street Church of Christ in West Memphis, Arkansas. I have been close friends with the minister, Mike Seale, for more than 35 years. I don’t live in the area, nor am I member of the CofC, but when I visit Mike and “MOST,” I am always greeted by the parishoners with great love and warmth; and Mike’s sermons are always thoughtful, exegetically sound, and passionately conveyed from one who truly seeks the heart of Jesus.

Delighted to add your congregation — and say “hello” to Patrick and Matt for me! Matt was our first youth minister (and an incredible worship leader) and Patrick has spoken here more than once. Good folks …

I’ve added Cornerstone to the list, but the URL you provided doesn’t work. The link is to one of two Facebook pages for Cornerstone. I hope it’s the right one. I can’t find an actual webpage on Google.

I appreciate your compiling a list of congregations which line up with your Progressive faction. If I had published such a list of Progressive congregations you would have been at the forefront condemning my divisiveness.

I believe the list you have compiled has great value.

For those of us who continue to believe and practice what we have always believed and practiced, these are congregations to avoid. For those of you who have exchanged your earlier convictions for new convictions (or for a lack of conviction, as we have seen in New Wineskins’ Universalism), these congregations will suit nicely.

Greg, in all fairness Jay didnt mention these as being necessarily “Progressive” churches. I’m familiar with many of these congregations and I feel you would be comfortable worshiping with them. I’m not sure what the litmus test for “Progressive” is.
My sister worships at Saturn Road in Texas and I dont think that is their reputation.

Greg wrote: “If I had published such a list of Progressive congregations you would have been at the forefront condemning my divisiveness.
…
I believe the list you have compiled has great value. For those of us who continue to believe and practice what we have always believed and practiced, these are congregations to avoid.”

Holy “invisible beam in the eye”, Batman!

And you COMPLAIN that someone might consider you divisive? Greg, what else can anyone possibly think after they read your post? If someone else accused you, I would have to hold my own assessment in abeyance. But since you (1) choose to post for no other reason than to declare your division from other CoC’s and (2) declare your avoidance of those from whom you’ve divided, your own words make your divisiveness clear.

To clarify something here, making distinctions is not necessarily divisive. A cowboy can observe that both cowboys and Indians eat at this restaurant. It only becomes divisive when he adds, “You may want to eat with Indians, but I don’t.”

I am a charismatic, and I fellowship with both charismatics and fundamentalists. We are different, but I do not hold myself apart from fundamentalists on that basis. That is a distinction without division. Sadly, there are a few folks still out there for whom distinction REQUIRES division. “My four and no more.” These folks are shrinking islands in a rising sea.

As to convictions– When I was a child I had certain convictions, like girls having cooties, and that the tooth fairy was real (and cheap), and that the consumption of asparagus was deadly. I have since exchanged some of my earlier convictions for better ones. It’s called growing up. And it is a lifetime project. A man who learns nothing after age 20 of enough significance as to change any of his existing convictions is not sanctified; he is merely ossified.

I’ve been in the hospital the last several days coping with kidney issues, and so I’ve not been able to respond until now. I’m finally at home, convalescing.

This particular page is not a list of congregations aligned with a particular perspective. It is, as the page has said from its inception, a listing of congregations recommended by the readership.

From the beginnings of this blog, I’ve had readers request recommendations for churches to consider as they’ve moved to new communities. I’ve often asked the readers for their advice, as my knowledge of the churches in most towns is fairly limited.

If you were to review the old posts here, you’d find several where I asked the readership on behalf of a reader for church recommendations in city A or B.

It would be futility for a reader to ask for a “progressive” Church of Christ, as the term lacks a useful definition. And in fact it’s difficult to pin down the working theology of many congregations.

I recently had a preacher in search of a new congregation ask me how to tell whether a church is progressive. I could offer little guidance. After all, churches are living beings that are in constant change. The preacher’s theology and the elders’ theology are sometimes not the same or may be in the process of reconsideration or maturation. And the congregation may well be more or less mature than its leadership.

In short, this is not a roll of churches that agree with or support my views. It is exactly what it purports to be: a compilation of recommendations from the readers given to other readers who’ve asked for recommendations.

Not sure this is a fight worth having, but let’s at least give due regard to the facts. For the record, at the time of Mr. Tidwell’s posting, the URL for this page was “progressive-church-of-christ-congregations”. It has since been renamed to “recommended-church-of-christ-congregations”. (See here for a Google cache of the old page, for however long it lasts.) Not to be snarky, but it would seem the term “progressive” had a useful enough definition four days ago.

From the inception of the page, it’s been exactly what it says it is. In fact, it’s a compilation of recommendations from readers of this blog — who are from all segments of the Churches of Christ. I have readers who are one cup, premillennial, no Sunday school, non-institutional, mainstream, charismatic, emerging — you name it. Because the blog is focused on unity within God’s kingdom, it has attracted a readership from across the entire Church of Christ spectrum.

The churches listed are as recommended by the readers. I am familiar with only a handful myself. They represent no faction and I’m sure do not necessarily endorse this site or my views. Rather, some who read this blog endorse those churches. Those churches should be proud to be recommended by such good people.

I have confidence in the readership to make thoughtful recommendations to their fellow readers, guided by the Golden Rule and their own experiences and understandings of the scripture.

I’ve been digging around to trace the origins of the URL, as I had forgotten that “progressive” was in it until looking at the site this morning. Suffice to say, the URL was created by operator error. I discovered the problem sometime after the page was created, but the WordPress version available to me when I posted the page did not allow me to change URLs (or if it did, I didn’t know how to do it), and I gave the URL no thought until this morning. In the 16 months the page has been up, the URL attracted no attention from the readership — who would have certainly objected to characterizing all the listed churches as “progressive.”

I noticed the URL this morning, I suspected the URL was causing some confusion, the version of WordPress I now have makes it easy to change it, and so I changed it. But the links to the page and text descriptions of the page have never referred to “progressive” Churches of Christ. In fact, I suspect there are many churches on the list who would not meet most definitions of “progressive.”

I’d like to recommend the Monmouth Church of Christ, if possible. Caveat emptor: I am the minister at this church, but I feel compelled to recommend it because there are no others listed in NJ and we really are quite progressive!